


pasiphaë

by atiredonnie



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-08-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:49:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26217427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atiredonnie/pseuds/atiredonnie
Summary: You attempted to clean yourself earlier, but Eridan has always been clingy in life, and does not differ in death. You feel dirty. You feel hungry. And you are oh so very tired.Kanaya and what she is owed.
Relationships: Rose Lalonde/Kanaya Maryam
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18





	pasiphaë

There is not much talking after the first go-around, preliminaries and introductions now discarded. There is a sort of awkwardness in the air, a heaviness you feel better than anyone. Like the aftermath of drunken camaraderie, in the occasion that said camaraderie included a murder, or six. You understand the trepidation. All the humans know is that there are four of you, and there used to be twelve. The rest goes relatively unsaid. 

Of course, the blood helps. And the smell. 

You decide to interrupt the peace. You are a meddler. That’s just what you do. 

“We should locate the bodies. Clean them up, and separate Gamzee from them. I see no reason why he should have seven perfectly serviceable corpses.”

It’s a joke. It doesn’t go over entirely well. Terezi grins, but she grins at everything, especially if it isn’t the slightest bit funny. Gamzee does not blink, only looks at you from beneath low, swooping eyelids. Rose smiles, a little sideways inflection of her lips, and despite the fact that you know she is only smiling because she knows of your potential to be funny, not because you’re actually sending everyone into hysterics right now, it makes your heart quicken regardless. You love her a little desperately for it. And everything else. 

Karkat makes a desperate noise in the back of his throat, like his esophagus is choking with contempt and words. Well, not contempt, actually. Just sadness and a bit of anger. His fists are clenched and you know betwixt his knuckles, his palms are ruddy with blood. You’re all covered in blood to some extent. 

Terezi and Karkat have the best of it. Karkat’s only got flicks of Gamzee’s scabs and skin covering him, on his hands, mainly, from when he pressed his hands against Gamzee’s ruined cheeks, looking to soothe whatever cut him open, searching maniacally for something resembling love or remorse or anything. You don’t know if you found it. You know he thinks he did, but you do not trust Karkat with matters of the heart, bless him. 

Terezi killed Vriska very easily and without much fuss. The blade slid in like it was slicing through Spam, lungs and breastbone perforated by her sword until the tip of it came out on the other end, dripping. It was done with precision and care by someone who didn’t want their victim to live. 

Or someone who didn’t want their victim to hurt. 

Barely, if any blood should’ve gotten on her, tainted her utterly atrocious courtroom fantasy garment. Maybe her gloves, if she held the sword improperly afterwards. But there are flecks caressing her, little clumsy streaks of cobalt in her hair and on her face. You realize Terezi has been fondling corpses, with gentle despair. You wonder how much of a faux paus it would be to ask to lick the splatters of cerulean off of her. You think she would find it uproarious outwardly, but that serves no insight as to how she would legitimately perceive you.

You and Gamzee are completely soaked. You attempted to clean yourself earlier, but Eridan has always been clingy in life, and does not differ in death. You feel dirty. You feel hungry. And you are oh so very tired. 

The humans, meanwhile, remain clean and distant in their godliness. They reverberate, almost, Rose a sunlit sight to perceive, Dave red and burgundy and looking very ancient, besides. Their godly garments pulse like a second heartbeat, clean and dry and fresh and the sensation of separation from them runs down to your aching bones. You aren’t feeling much like a rainbow-drinker, not mythical in your scope and pointed sexuality. All you feel is blood encrusted beneath your nails. 

It’s exhausting. 

The sun burns hot in the sky, green and gigantic and freshly-born. Your eyes are beginning to sting from the impact of the light on your retinas, but even so you continue to look. After spending your entire life incapable of basking in sunlight due to the noxious nature of Alternia’s environment, the chance to actually dwell in sunshine, any sunshine, malformed and monstrous though it may be, is not something you are capable of turning down. You realize that soon Sollux will rend himself nothingness to cast you all out in the great, big, black beyond, and you’re willing to admit that the misery you feel curling in your gut at the thought of that is less concern for Sollux’s wellbeing, and more your own need to stay dry and full of light. You cannot imagine spending another second in darkness, nor another second fretting over anyone’s wellbeing like a spurned mother. 

Is it selfishness, then, what you are feeling? But you believe you must be owed selfishness. 

After all these years, perhaps you deserve to be the child trolls are not intended to be, in their slow grooming, in their construction as weapons of war and sullen handmaids. Perhaps you deserve your own little patch of nuclear-green, candy-apple sunshine. 

Rose lingers on the periphery of your vision. If you will stay, it will be for her. 

But you do not intend to pacify her. Nor anyone, anymore. You demand that much. 

There is blood beneath your eyelids. 

You tilt your face upwards and drink.


End file.
